Presentation on Writing your Annual Report - Mark Thomas and Steve Smedley

1. Writing your annual report
Best practice
Steve Smedley and Mark Thomas
10 March 2011

2. Annual report - a key component
of co-regulation
• sets out the service offer, including
any local offer(s)
• a commitment to deliver the offer
• underpinned by a “warts and all”
self-assessment
• an effective transparency and
accountability tool
• format and performance information
tenants need
• tenant involvement in its production
2

3. Annual report - a key component
of co-regulation
• > 1000 properties - proportionate
approach
• due October
• share with the TSA
• done properly – centre-piece of
tenant scrutiny and co-regulation
3

4. What happened?
• “near universal response rate”
• 98.3% have published
• 99.7% including extensions
• TSA has commissioned
National Tenant Organisations
to explore 2010 submissions
from a tenant’s perspective
• due soon
• will help with 2011
submission
4

5. Review of regulation - co-regulation
even more important?
• compliant with localism and
transparency agendas
• consumer regulation becomes
consumer protection
• from bureaucratic to democratic
accountability
• armchair auditors = tenant scrutiny
= reduced regulation
• no requirement to cc TSA in to
annual report
5

6. Review of regulation - co-regula-
tion even more important?
• tenant scrutiny beefed up
• agree with tenants the provision of
timely, useful information
• support & recognise tenant panels
• regulator to address serious failures
to implement effective scrutiny
• new involvement & empowerment
standard pending
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7. HouseMark’s observations
• commitment to co-regulation and
improving tenant scrutiny
• quality varies – improvement required
• self-assessment – more robust & honest,
less of a PR stunt
• involve tenants in the process
• clear articulation of offer & associated standards
• reporting performance
• the right info in the right format
• tenants want cost and performance comparisons to
judge VFM
• a compelling performance story
• more from Mark
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8. Our experience
• Produced toolkit – 250
enquiries
• 12 tenant groups facilitated
• 20 reports produced ord
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8

9. Facilitating tenant involvement
LHA Co-ops TSA Annual Report Survey
Annual Report Residents Focus Group
Agenda 1. Please rank in order of importance to you the six TSA standards in the regulatory
framework? (Score the most important 1 and the least important 5)
1. LHA Co-­ops and annual reports – some background Governance and financial viability
Home
Neighbourhood Management and Community
2. Who is the report aimed at? – our residents Tenant involvement and empowerment
Tenancy
Value for money
3. What do we have to report? – the TSA guidance
2. How would you prefer to read the text? (choose one option)
Chatty and informal (friendly, aimed at you)
4. What’s the message to our readers?
Plain and formal (lots of short sentences)
5. What’s going to be in it? 3. How would you prefer the design? (choose one option)
Creative, something a bit different
Neat and clear
6. What do we want to sound like? Chatty, informal or something else
4. Do you think graphs and charts make figures easier to understand?
Yes
7. What do we want it to look like? Compare with others No
5. Other than a printed report, are there any other ways you would like to receive this
8. Making figures easy to understand, what works best for you? information
…....................................................................................................................................
9. How have you been involved
6. Tell us something about how you have been involved in the production of this annual
report and what you felt about this session
10. How we know we’ve done a good job
…....................................................................................................................................
11. Other ways to get our message across …....................................................................................................................................
…....................................................................................................................................
7. Any other comments
…....................................................................................................................................
9